


Tikkun Olam

by jeeno2, Yours_Truly_Commander_Shepard



Series: Tikkun Olam [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Based on a True Story, Crack, F/M, Humor, Jewish Ben Solo, Jewish Holidays, Jewish Themes, Poor Leon, Yiddish, celia we love you happy birthday darling <3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-17
Updated: 2019-08-04
Packaged: 2020-06-30 05:32:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19846624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeeno2/pseuds/jeeno2, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yours_Truly_Commander_Shepard/pseuds/Yours_Truly_Commander_Shepard
Summary: "Tikkun Olam:" Defined by acts of kindness performed to perfect or repair the world.(Or: Four Times Rey Tries to be a Very Supportive Shiksa)





	1. "Posh Nosh"

**Author's Note:**

  * For [crossingwinter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/crossingwinter/gifts).



> Celia, we adore you. And so in honor of your birthday we have written five totally unrelated one-shots in which Rey tries to be very very supportive of Jewish Ben Solo and his Jewish ways (or non-ways).
> 
> Happiest of happy birthdays, friend <3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Ben Solo learns the hard way that Urban Dictionary is an unreliable source of information.

**Hi there :)**

**just landed at the airport**

**Still want to see me tonight?**

Ben knows Rey is just giving him shit. Of _course_ he still wants to see her tonight. 

She knows that. He’s made no secret of the fact that the past six weeks without her have made his semester away even more excruciating than it otherwise would have been. 

Even though he knows she’s joking, her words still sting a little. Because really--how can she joke about something like this?

He texts her back immediately.

_Of course I want to see you tonight._

_What kind of a question is that?_

**Good :)**

**I can’t wait to see you Ben**

**I’ve missed you**

Ben leans back in his desk chair and lets a slow smile spread across his face.

_I’ve missed you so fucking much, Rey._

_You have no idea._

Because she doesn’t. He’s told her, dozens of times and hundreds of ways. But she still can’t really know what it’s been like for him having to suffer all these awful people all alone. 

**I have something special planned for tonight**

**If you’re up for it.**

**;)**

In spite of himself--in spite of the fact that Rey is, at this moment, still a solid forty miles away from him, and he has no idea what that _something special_ might be--Ben feels himself twitch inside his shorts with anticipation. Because he’s just that pathetic.

_Oh really?_

**Yeah**

**How does a little “posh nosh” sound**

**Right when I get to your place**

**Before we do anything else**

Ben frowns at his phone, rereading her texts.

Posh nosh? 

_Nosh_?

As in… the Yiddish word for food?

That can’t be right. 

Ben might be Jewish--technically, anyway; on paper--but it’s been a very long time since he’s allowed any Yiddish slang to slip into his own vocabulary. He’s positive he’s never used any Yiddish around Rey in the two years he’s known her. And as far as he knows, he’s the only even nominally Jewish person Rey spends significant time with.

 _Posh nosh_ must be some millennial slang thing he’s not familiar with. Something stupid and nonsensical. Like _deadass,_ or _I’m baby._

Rey likes to tease Ben, often telling him he’s a forty-five-year-old man trapped inside a thirty year-old body. Most of the time he disagrees with her. It’s _normal_ to be in bed by nine and up by five the next morning. Normal for adults with adult jobs, anyway. And just because he refuses to get Amazon Prime does not mean he’s a _fuddy-duddy_ (as she puts it) or a Luddite. It just means he’s a person concerned about worldwide monopolies and the ramifications they create for the rest of the planet. In truth, shouldn't _everyone_ be worried about Amazon?

But when it comes to understanding and correctly using hip new lingo, Rey might have a point. The last time he really understood most of what people were saying to him was 2010. He was twenty-one back then. And even then, there were times he’d have to google things after conversations ended just to be certain he’d understood everyone correctly.

 _Posh nosh sounds great,_ Ben texts her back. Even though he doesn’t really know what it is he’s just agreed to. _That sounds amazing in fact._

Ben may not know what _posh nosh_ means in the context Rey is using it. But he does know he will never have it in him to deny Rey anything she wants. He’ll google _posh nosh_ after this conversation is over. Or maybe he’ll consult Urban Dictionary, a marvel of a thing that’s helped him decipher more nonsense conversations than he can count.

Either way, Rey isn’t going to be here for two more hours. He has time.

**Yay :)**

**Promise we can do posh nosh before we do anything else?**

**I mean like first thing?**

_Of course._

_I can’t wait._

* * *

After Ben is finished straightening up his apartment and shaving (just in case; she likes him stubbly, but not _too_ stubbly), he sits back down at his desk to begin his research.

He opens his web browser and decides to go right to the source.

“Urban Dictionary dot com,” he murmurs quietly to himself as he types it into the address bar.

He types _posh nosh_ into the little window that pops up and hits enter.

And then, he nearly falls out of his chair.

Ben reads the Urban Dictionary definition again. And then he reads it again, just to be sure he isn’t imagining things.

After reading it for the fourth time, Ben leans back in his chair again, letting out a slow, shaky breath.

Why on God’s green earth does Rey want to do _this_ tonight?

It isn’t that he doesn’t enjoy Rey’s blowjobs. Fuck-- he _loves_ her blowjobs. It’s long been his sexual act of choice, and ever since the semester started taking a turn for the very worse he’s been fantasizing about her mouth on his cock basically every night. He likes to jerk off to memories of her kneeling between his thighs on the floor of this tiny rented apartment, naked and beautiful with his cock stuffed halfway down her throat, cupping his balls as he falls apart.

But doing it with a condom?

Seriously?

They haven’t used condoms in ages. And they’ve never used one for oral. Does _anyone_ actually use condoms for oral?

He has half a mind to text her back right now and tell her he’d rather not do _posh nosh_ tonight after all. But… she’d seemed so excited when he told her he was down for some. Clearly, this is something she’s really looking forward to for some reason.

And it isn’t as though any kind of sex with Rey is ever a _bad_ thing. The truth of the matter is, he’s dying to get his hands on her again and will settle for literally anything she’ll let him do.

In the end, he decides that if Rey really wants to suck him off while he’s wearing a condom before they do anything else, then that’s exactly what she’s going to get.

A quick rummage through his bedside drawer tells Ben that, yes, he does still have that box of extra-large Magnums he bought back when he was still just hoping he’d maybe be lucky enough one day to get into Rey’s pants. There are only two left (they’d had _a lot_ of sex that first week), but two condoms will at least see them through the first two rounds of _posh-noshing_ without him needing to make a run for the store for more.

Hopefully he won’t need to go back to the store at all. Hopefully after two _posh noshes_ Rey will be okay going without again. 

Because aside from all the obvious annoyances that come with using condoms, Ben despises the looks he always gets whenever he buys them.

He’s had enough of the _are you_ sure _you really need those, big fella?_ looks to last him a lifetime.

Because yes, he’s sure. He knows he’s big. He’s known ever since he was nineteen, when he got naked with an actual real live girl for the first time and she told him point blank that most guys don’t look the way he does. There is literally zero need for those asshole Target cashiers to smirk at him the way they do, staring a few awkward moments too long right at his crotch, whenever he buys the only kind of rubbers that’ll fit him.

Ben peers at the date at the back of the box, and--

Yes. Okay. Good.

These won’t expire for another year.

Satisfied, Ben puts the condoms back in his bedside drawer and starts to undress, tingling all over in anticipation.

* * *

It seems like the condoms shrunk since the last time they used them.

Or maybe he’s just gotten bigger. He didn’t think that was a thing that actually could happen to guys after high school, but either way, something is very much not working right now.

Ben’s in the position he used to assume whenever Rey did this for him before. He’s naked and lying on his back, hard as a rock after stroking himself to soft thoughts of Rey. But the stupid thing just won’t unroll properly. It keeps getting… stuck or something, halfway up his shaft, refusing to roll all the way up his dick or do literally anything he’s asking it to do. Almost as though this fucking condom were channeling the world’s grumpiest cat right now.

“Come… on… you… _fucker_ …” Ben’s gritting his teeth and so focused on getting this extra-large Magnum-sized asshole onto his dick that he doesn’t even hear it when the front door to his apartment opens, or when someone steps inside.

He also doesn’t hear it when the front door closes again, or when a large paper bag full of food is set down on the kitchen counter.

But then a distinctly female, unquestionably Rey voice calls out from just outside his bedroom door.

“Ben?”

And that…

 _That_ he hears.

He scrambles to his feet--or tries to anyway; it’s not an easy feat, given how his dick is still tangled up in an irascible condom--and is just about to head into the living room to greet Rey when she beats him to it, walking right into his bedroom before he can walk out of it.

She’s beautiful today. She’s always beautiful, of course, but it looks like she went to extra effort for this weekend visit they’ve planned. Her hair is down, free of the three adorably messy little buns she usually wears at the back of her head, and falling to her shoulders in pretty brown waves. Ben wants to touch it, to run his hands through it, to feel its softness sift through his fingers now that she’s back here with him where she belongs.

He’s just about to do it when she takes a step back and looks him over, an odd expression on her face.

“What are you doing, Ben?” Her eyes are on his dick, and on the condom that’s barely hanging off it. “Why are you…?”

She trails off. Bites her lip.

Ben frowns.

“Why am I what?”

“Naked,” she finally says. “Naked, and kind of… half-wearing a crumpled-up condom?”

Ben blinks at her. “Isn’t this what you wanted?”

“What?” Rey takes another step back. “I mean--yes, I figured we’d have sex at some point this weekend, probably even tonight, but…”

She looks down at his dick again--even harder than it was before, incredibly, now that it’s finally in the very presence of its biggest source of inspiration--before her eyes travel back up to his face. “But I wasn’t expecting you to greet me in the bedroom, naked and with a condom half on.”

Ben pauses, trying to make sense of what she’s telling him. “You said you wanted to…um.”

Suddenly, Ben is beginning to wonder if Urban Dictionary has led him very, very astray here. But how is that possible? Without Urban Dictionary he’d never have known what at least two dozen different slang words meant. Without Urban Dictionary he’d be lost, and at least as confused in his day-to-day life as any run-of-the-mill Gen Xer. Without Urban Dictionary he would have continued thinking _yeet_ referred to the noise a sheep made and nothing else. 

“You said you wanted to do some _posh nosh_ before we did anything else tonight.”

Rey gets that look on her face she gets whenever he’s being an exceptional dumbass. The one that reminds him of a schoolteacher trying to patiently explain a simple concept to a dim child.

“Yes,” Rey says evenly. “I did say I wanted _posh nosh_ as soon as I got here. That’s why I got take-away from Girl and the Goat on my way over.”

They stare at each other for a long moment after that, not saying anything, the only sound in the room coming from the poor, bedraggled condom slowly unfurling its way back off his dick. It’s an uncomfortable sensation--though not nearly as uncomfortable as the dawning realization that Urban Dictionary has likely played him for a goddamn fool.

“You…” Ben pauses. Licks his lips. “You meant _posh nosh_ in the… like…” He closes his eyes. Why does this perfect woman put up with him? He will never understand. “You meant it in the Yiddish sense?”

“Yes.”

“In the, _let’s eat some fancy food_ sense.”

“Yes.”

She’s getting impatient now, Ben can tell. And more than a little annoyed. 

But he has to be sure.

“So what you’re saying is… you didn’t mean it in the _definition I found on the internet_ sense.”

“What? _”_ Rey starts to laugh. “What definition did you find on the internet?”

Ben closes his eyes and scrubs a hand over his face.

“Nevermind. Just… um.” He glances around the room, to where he chucked off his clothes fifteen minutes ago. “Just give me a minute and I’ll join you in the kitchen.”

He turns to get his clothes. 

But before he can manage it, Rey puts a hand on his bare shoulder, stopping him.

“What did you think _posh nosh_ meant, Ben?” She’s moving closer, sliding her hand down his chest, and-- _fuck_ \--she puts one of her hands on his dick before peeling off the stupid condom and tossing it to the side. “ _Nosh_ is a Yiddish word, isn’t it? Pretty basic one. Everyone knows what _nosh_ means.” She raises an eyebrow at him. “I have no idea what you thought I was saying, but I promise I wasn’t trying to trick you into...” She glances down his body. She smirks. “Into whatever this is.”

Ben opens his mouth--to answer her; to tell her he’s fine, she doesn’t need to touch his dick right now, they can eat first--but now she’s sliding her hand along his shaft, up and down, adding that neat little twist at his base that always drives him a little crazy.

His mouth goes dry.

“Uh…” He’s trying to form words. But it’s difficult. It always is, when Rey touches him like this. “I didn’t think you used--” she pulls her hand away, and licks her palm; when she wraps it around his cock again, soft and warm and wet, his vision nearly whites out--“Yiddish slang.”

“Oh,” Rey’s hand pauses briefly, then resumes its slow, rhythmic movements. _Fuck_ , he’s missed this so much. He’s missed _her_ so much. He digs his fingernails into his palms to keep from falling to his knees in helpless gratitude. “I’m trying to learn a few words.”

“But _why_?” Rey’s hand is moving faster now and Ben’s eyes flutter closed, and he really does want to know why she’s trying to learn a little Yiddish--but he worked himself into a pretty gnarly state before she got here, just so he could get the fucking condom on that they apparently won’t actually need, and now that she’s touching him like this, focusing on much of anything at all but her hand on his dick is just about impossible.

And then…

And then, she gets down on her knees and whips off her shirt. Just like she’s done in every single one of his recent fantasies. 

_Fuck._

She’s wearing a red bra with tiny, perfect, lacy cups, and his dick is just inches away from her mouth, and---

“I want to be supportive,” she says. “Of your heritage, I mean. Your mother is giving me pointers.” 

His eyes fly open. “My mother?”

But Rey doesn’t answer him. Instead, she wordlessly leans forward and, with a sly smile, licks a hungry stripe along his cock from base to tip. His cock throbs against her lips, and while he wants to have this conversation with her and eat the dinner she brought for them to share, he also thinks he might actually die if he doesn’t come soon. 

“You’re Jewish, Ben. And I know you don’t talk about that very much, but… I just thought if I learned a few Yiddish words…”

She pauses, and looks up at him from beneath her lashes. She’s so fucking gorgeous like this. And she has no idea.

“I want to _zoygn_ your _putz_ , Ben,” she murmurs.

His eyes go wide. “You want to _what?”_

But she doesn’t answer him with words. Instead, she takes him fully into her mouth, then, hollowing out her cheeks.

He comes in less than ten seconds, and so hard he sees stars.

And that’s how Ben Solo learned to stop worrying about Yiddish slang and that Urban Dictionary is garbage.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Believe it or not this chapter was (very loosely) based on true events.


	2. There's No Sex (In the Yichud Room)

Ben is early to the wedding, which is not very Jewish of him. He doesn’t exactly know where else to go, so he heads to the synagogue and paces in front of it for want of anything better to do. 

It is his third lap around the block when he sees her. Hears her, really, the scrape of the rolling suitcase and her tripod, plus her muttered expletives. Ben is nobody’s idea of a white knight, but he isn’t so irredeemable that he doesn’t leap to help someone struggling with so much luggage. It doesn’t even matter, because he doesn’t notice until he has her tripod in his arms, that she is lovely like an exotic flower in her orange dress and pink shoes, hair curling from the July heat and cheeks red with exertion. 

When he sees her, a bracha runs through his mind:

_Barukh atah Adonai Eloheinu melekh ha-olam shelo ḥiseir ba-olamo k’lum…_

Blessed are you, o Lord, cosmic majesty,

for there is nothing lacking in the world at all,

and good creatures and good trees were created in it,

through which pleasure is brought to the children of Adam.

_No. That’s for fruit trees_ , he tells himself. 

“Thank you,” she mutters with less grace than he might have expected, and rights herself before looking up at him. She takes his measure. Ben rarely feels the need to make himself smaller and less threatening these days, but perhaps standing in front of Temple Beth-El leads him to assume the habits of his childhood. 

“You’re welcome,” Ben tells her belatedly, when he realizes that she is still looking at him with the expectation of an answer. Something in his embarrassment finally relaxes her, because the corners of her wide, pink mouth curl up. 

“Are you going inside?” she asks, tilting her head at the fine stone façade of Alderaan’s oldest synagogue. 

The truthful answer is that Ben doesn’t know. He’s come all this way--flown and booked a hotel and rented a car—without ever really forming a firm intention of being a guest at the wedding of Leah Organa Skywalker and Chanan Solow. The second wedding, though the first to be held under a chuppah with all the important particulars and thus the first in the eyes of Hashem and the law of Moses. 

Ben has been carrying the invitation around his kitchen for more than a month, thinking about whether he will attend. The invitation is thick cream cardstock, engraved with Hebrew on one side and English on the other, and was doubtless dispatched in identical form to hundreds of Alderaan’s notable families. There was no reason to believe that Ben’s invitation was any more sincere than the yearly question of whether he’ll be home for the High Holidays. He’d like to believe that it wasn’t his father’s phone call two days previous that resolved the issue and that he has yet to decide to finally walk into this temple for the first time in two decades. 

“You need to come home for your mother’s wedding,” Han told him, in a tone of command wholly unfamiliar to Ben’s lived experience. “Or you won’t need to come home ever again.” 

It’s more of a threat than it seems; Ben hasn’t been home in years, but the loss of the optionality would be somehow worse than the polite fiction that he is very busy, he is working, maybe next year. 

“I was at your first wedding,” Ben told Han, temporizing.

The old man snorted. “Yeah, you were the reason for the first wedding.” Attending as a five-month bump under Leah’s flower-print smock at the county clerk’s office was apparently insufficient filial devotion to win Ben a reprieve from the second set of nuptials. Leah wanted a second wedding to mark her second marriage to the same man, and this time she wanted to do everything right: fancy invitations, a chuppah, seated dinner for two hundred, all the right words. 

The idea that the proper prayers and rituals will bless this second marriage more than the first—a first marriage that had, after all, produced _him_ —has engendered some reluctance to be a guest. Especially in his uncle’s synagogue. 

The woman is still looking at him expectantly, and it is not as though he is going to explain to a stranger that he has traveled four time zones but isn’t quite certain he wishes to go in. 

“Yes,” he finally says. “Are you a guest, or…?” He looks politely at her bags of equipment. 

“I’m a photographer. _The_ photographer, actually, since my assistant just called in hungover,” she says, before she appears to realize that such an admission would probably seem unprofessional. She sucks in a deep breach and squints. 

“I’m Rey,” she tells him, sticking out a hand.

“Ben,” he responds before he can recall that he doesn’t really use that name any longer. But here he was called to the Torah as Binyamin ben Chanan, and here, it seems, he will always be Ben. 

“So,” she says, studying his face. “Are you Jewish?”

Ben touches the black velvet kippah clipped to the back of his head. He had to dig it out of a box of dusty sports memorabilia that had traveled from apartment to apartment with him throughout his adult life. 

“Sure, yeah,” he answers. “Why?” 

Rey smiles up at him, the freckles on her nose coming into prominence. 

“This is the first Jewish wedding I’ve shot. I have some questions.”

* * *

“…This is the chuppah,” Ben gestures, probably unnecessarily. It is a more-or-less permanent structure in the middle of the temple _gan_ , and each bride decorates it with flowers and the canopy. 

Leia’s taste has always been refined and minimalist, as long as Ben can remember it. Here, though, she has abandoned any semblance of restraint. The poles of the chuppah are adorned with star-gazer lilies over tulips, under hydrangeas, beneath roses, twined with peonies, ranunculus, and poppies. It’s a rainbow riot of color, and it makes Ben’s sinuses swell just to look at it. 

“Well, the colors will pop in this light,” Rey says diplomatically. She unholsters the large camera slung around her shoulder. “Mind if I take a few test shots?” 

“Ah…” Ben wishes he could think of a reason to refuse, but Rey is already gently guiding him under the canopy. 

“Stand there, look left,” she says. She looks at the display, adjusts a couple of settings, snaps another shot. 

“Okay, and what do they do while they’re under there?” she asks, still clicking away. He digs his heel against the grass, trying to remember. 

“The bride circles the groom seven times,” Ben begins. 

“Oh,” Rey says. “Can you do that? So I can get the angles?”

He nods. “Yes, but my m-…Leah is a lot shorter than me.” 

So he turns and walks around the chuppah, with Rey clicking the camera. As he walks, he dredges up the other details of the ceremony. The unveiling, the two cups of wine, the ring. 

He begins humming the seven blessings under his breath, but Rey stops and cocks her head.

“What’s that?” 

“Sheva brachot,” he murmurs, trying to remember the words. Was the blessing of Jerusalem before or after the Garden of Eden?

Rey lowers her camera. 

“You know it all really well,” she points out. “Were you married before?”

Ben snorts before he can stop himself. He and everyone he knows abandoned the idea that there would ever be a nice Jewish girl meeting him under a chuppah many years ago.

“No, I just- I used to- a long time ago. I used to sing. At weddings,” he admits. After his bar mitzvah, and before his voice finished changing. Before he put on too many inches and muscles and bad ideas. 

Rey smiles at him, and he thinks of wine and honey and the soft noises of the congregation davening in the evening. 

She walks a little around him, takes a picture. Walks behind the chuppah. Another photo. Walks to his left. Another. Returns to the front. One full circle. Snap snap snap. 

“Still to come then,” she says. 

* * *

They return to the building, and a couple of guests have begun to trickle in. Ben quickly points out the rooms where the pre-ceremony reception will soon start, then the yichud room.

“Oh, can I see?” she asks, and Ben shrugs, because sure, it’s nothing special, his uncle probably still stores the costumes for the Purim spiel in there. 

Ben opens the door, and sees that someone (probably his mother), has done some redecorating. There’s a loveseat, and a small table and chairs, and a side table with a dim lamp and a few bottles of water. 

Rey unholsters her camera again, taking a few snaps.

“So what’s the yichud room for?” she asks, squinting at the artificial light in her display.

Ben shrugs. “The bride and groom aren’t supposed to be alone together before the wedding. After the wedding, they lock themselves in here for a few minutes to represent that they’re married.” 

Rey lowers the camera. 

“You mean they…consummate the marriage?” Rey asks incredulously. She looks at the loveseat and the dining set as though wondering where the act is accomplished. 

Ben laughs to avoid visibly cringing. As far as he was concerned his parents _consummated_ once, before their first wedding, producing him. And never again. “No, no, no. Maybe a long time ago, somewhere…no. There’s no sex in the yichud room.” 

Rey puts her camera down on the table. 

“You’re positive?” she asks, tilting her head up at him. 

“Very sure,” Ben answers absently, thinking of how Chanan and Leah are probably in the building already, and what he’s going to say to everyone.

Rey licks her lips, a tiny flash of pink. She drops her shoulders back. Ben pauses, rewinds. 

“…well, could there be?” 

* * *

Ben has two fingers tucked into her pussy before he remembers that he should probably lock the door. Rey’s lost to it already, her cheeks flushed and her wrist bent over the back of the loveseat they’ve been falling off of. 

He double-checks the bolts (halachically approved, he’s certain) and takes a moment to appreciate the picture Rey makes, legs akimbo and ankle dangling. 

“Take a picture, it will last longer,” she tells him impishly, and he feints as though he’s going for her camera, then dives onto her as she shrieks with laughter. 

Her clothes are easily removed, his less so; so many buttons and folds and unnecessary layers between himself and her skin, so soft and firm and smelling of peaches. 

He wishes he could put his mouth on every part of her, and feel her melt on his tongue like butterscotch candy. All he has time to do is to wrap his mouth around her breasts and suck on her small raspberry nipples, thinking of the blessing for fruit of the vine. 

Her stuttered gasp as he curls his fingers inside her is the only welcome he needs today, and her hand in his hair the only benediction. Soon she is gasping, a series of sweet vocative sounds: oh, oh Ben, oh. 

He almost doesn’t say anything, his hind brain telling him, ‘ _everyone gets HPV sooner or later,’_ and ‘ _thirty-four is a good age to become a father,’_ but she eventually pants into his mouth, “Do you have…” and he recalls that yes, yes he has a condom, squirrelled away in his wallet like an acorn for a lean winter, several years past. When he fumbles it out, he was relieved to see that he has beaten the expiration date by four months.

He pulls it on and whispers the prayer for unexpected pleasures: 

_Baruch atah, Adonai Eloheinu, melech haolam, shehecheyanu…_

Blessed are You, o Lord, cosmic majesty, who has kept us alive, sustained us, and brought us to this season.

Rey wiggles away from him and bends over the arm of the loveseat, her rounded ass shaded like the colors of ripe fruit. He kneels behind her to take his bite, then kiss the knobs of her spine all the way up to her neck. 

One hundred blessings a day, he is supposed to utter, and he could say a hundred blessings for Rey in this moment: the grace of her hands where they hold her body erect, the curve of her hip, where he pulls her to him, the softness of her cunt, as he pushes in. 

He could create entirely new brachot for the way she feels and the sounds she makes as he pulls her back against him. He is blessed, he is unmade, he is completely at her mercy, even if his clumsy form is bracketing her like an open parens. 

He learned as a teenager that every person is born with only one-half of a soul and looks all his or her life for the other sundered part. At some point, he ceased to grieve the loss, and stopped looking. Here, now, letting his body spend and shake against Rey as she cries his name, he remembers that he never wanted to be alone. 

“Hold me,” she murmurs, and he does, pulling her into his lap and plucking tendrils of hair out of his eyes.

As she slumps against his neck, breathing in the smell of his skin, he recalls the blessing over the fruit blossoms. He’s said that one already, at least in his heart. So instead he murmurs the words for good fortune: 

_Barukh atah Adonai Eloheinu melekh ha’olam hatov v’ha’meitiv._

Blessed are You, o Lord, cosmic majesty, who is good and causes good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ladies and gentlemen…of the G.E.D. class of 1999  
> I have one piece of advice for you  
> No matter what a stripper tells you  
> There's no sex in the Champagne Room…NONE!  
> Oh there's CHAMPAGNE in the Champagne Room  
> But you don't want champagne… you want sex  
> And there's no sex in the Champagne Room.
> 
> -Chris Rock


	3. Blessed and Inscribed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is no sex on Yom Kippur. (For real, this time).

“You’re vibrating like a watched kettle, kid,” Han tells him between loud slurps of Leia’s minestrone.

“That’s not even a coherent metaphor,” Ben retorts to evade Han’s incisive deduction that Ben’s mind is not on his dinner, but on his girlfriend’s impending arrival. 

Erev Yom Kippur means feasting, and feasting in the Organa-Solo household means Italian food, and lots of it. Most days, Leia thinks of cooking at home as a failure of dinner party scheduling, but for the holidays she will crack her knuckles and refresh her stash of wife/mother points by rendering multi-course meals at exquisitely timed intervals. 

Ben can’t concentrate on the promising sizzle of veal chops from the kitchen because Rey will be there any minute. His father is right; he’s tapping his foot, he’s fidgeting with his napkin, and (hopefully unknown to his father) he keeps getting hard when he thinks about taking Rey home to their apartment after services. 

She’s been gone for three months doing the required fieldwork for her degree. And while he’s proud of her to kvelling for landing this fellowship—he’s missed her. So much. 

He also misses sex. So much. 

He’d like to think he’s put as much effort into getting their apartment ready for her return as he has preparing to get laid, but honestly he hasn’t moved anything around since she left, and all it took was vacuuming, changing the sheets, and throwing out the accumulation of crusty socks. 

Buying new condoms and stocking his nightstand with lube and tissues were justifiable preparations.

The veal chops are plated and the braised kale is being passed when he hears the elevator open in the entryway. 

Moments later, Rey bursts in, bringing the smell of Indian summer on warm skin with her. Rey’s cheeks are flushed and pink over her white cotton dress. She’s the best thing he’s ever seen, and his throat closes with happiness. 

“I’m here! I’m here. I’m sorry- the train- I didn’t miss dinner, did I?”

Han and Leia both claim cheek kisses from Rey before Ben can get close—and if his father doesn’t think Ben sees the old dog’s hand slipping dangerously low on Rey’s back, he has another think coming. 

He’s restrained about kissing her in front of the avid gaze of his parents, but when their lips part, they hang onto the other’s hands. 

“Hi,” Rey says, smiling up at him. 

_I love you_ , he thinks back. 

The rest of the dinner is a blur. He doesn’t think he says much, his mind focused on Rey’s slender ankle where it is hooked around his own, under the table. He wants to haul her over his shoulder and carry her off to the bathroom. He wants to slither down under the tablecloth and put his face between her legs. He wants for this day to be over and for them to be pressed together in their bed. He wants to fall asleep inside her. 

“So, I actually uncovered a complete set of lead buttons, which is-“ Rey is telling Leia when Han’s phone timer goes off.

“Gotta leave for services, babe,” Han tells Leia. “We paid for the tickets, after all. Hate to waste them.”

Han is a convert of thirty-five years now, but still appalled that the synagogue sells tickets to High Holy Day services. 

They put the plates away, brush their teeth and chug some water, and walk the five blocks together in the fading October sunlight. 

Rey’s hand is sweaty in his own.

“Don’t worry,” Ben tells her. “Most of the people there haven’t been since last year. They’ve forgotten all the prayers too.” 

“I’ve watched it a couple of times on YouTube. I’m ready,” Rey murmurs. 

The Kol Nidre services aren’t Ben’s favorite; he doesn’t understand the Aramaic, there’s too much standing, and he’s always sweating under his tallis before they even get to the first Al Chet. But something about Rey standing next to him, chiming in at times with a word or phrase that she’s memorized, makes his heart swell in his chest. Half the members of the congregation here saw him stumble his way through his Torah portion fifteen years ago. He wants to tell them, ‘Look! Look, I’m still here. The Organa kid is still here, and my family is here, and someday you’ll have to write a check to my kids and eat your words about my singing.’

They don’t stay to hear the Book of Psalms read, and it’s before midnight when they trudge through the door of their apartment. Rey’s been there already to drop her bags and change, so she merely grabs her pajamas and disappears into the bathroom to do incomprehensible girl things.

Ben methodically puts away his dress shoes, folds his tallis away in his tie drawer, and strips to his undershirt and boxer-briefs. He doesn’t want to be lurking naked in the bed when Rey comes out of the restroom like a creep, so he busies himself pairing socks so as to be standing. She comes out of the bathroom wearing a white ribbed tank top over a pair of boxer shorts covered in pictures of corgis, and it’s…not the sexiest outfit in the world, but honestly he’d be hard for her if she were wearing a nun’s habit (a thought for another time) and he thinks maybe he can see her nipples through the fabric of her top. 

She’s braiding her hair for bed, and Ben thinks about tangling his fingers into it. 

Ben knows he’s not smooth. He is, in fact, the opposite of smooth. He can’t even remember in this moment how he has ever initiated sexual relations with a human woman before. Didn’t Rey usually do that part? 

He does know how to go about kissing her, though, and she makes a happy little sound in the back of her throat when he does. Her lips are soft and warm, and she links her arms behind his waist. But when he runs his hands down her lower back, she breaks the kiss and steps back a little, smiling at him as though they share a secret. But she doesn’t reach for him or indicate that she’s breaking lip contact so as to facilitate removal of clothing. 

Ben is confused. 

Ben can recall watching a nature program where the boy birds would prepare a little stage with pretty rocks and leaves, then sing until the girl birds came by to watch a song and dance. If they liked the dance, the boy bird got lucky. 

Ben wonders if maybe he should take his shirt off and flex a little. She’s already in his bedroom after all, and that’s most of the battle. Yeah, he would take his shirt off to sleep anyway, so that’s a good next move, he thinks, so he strips off his t-shirt, doing a little bit of unnecessary stretching in the process.

“Damn, baby, I didn’t even buy tickets. To that gun show,” Rey tells him, pretending to fan herself.

But she’s pulling the covers down on the bed, and Ben knows Rey is not an ‘under the covers’ kind of girl. She’s not even usually an ‘on the bed’ kind of girl. She’s more an ‘over the back of the sofa, transiting to the kitchen island, and finishing on the big living room rug’ kind of girl. 

“I guess you’re probably exhausted from your train ride,” Ben finally says, because he knows that a lot of people prefer sleep to sex. Not him. But he’s heard about it. 

“Eh, you know me. I can sleep anywhere,” Rey said. “But you know. We might as well go to bed now. Run out the clock. ‘Til sundown tomorrow, and so can get back to eating, washing, conjugal relations. And you know, leather shoes! Because I have new boots-“ her voice trails off at his horrified expression. 

Ben blinks at her. “I don’t- I don’t think- where did you even _hear_ that rule?”

If his parents have somehow cock-blocked him via some arcane point of ancient custom, he’s hiring actors to play them at the next holiday dinner.

Rey tucks her feet under her and pulls out her phone to show him the convenient “how to Jew” guide to Yom Kippur her campus Chabad chapter has posted on its website. 

“No conjugal relations,” Rey reads aloud.

Ben rolls his eyes. “You know our synagogue is Reform, right? And also, we’re not married. Ergo…” 

“You’re fasting,” she points out. 

“Well, yeah, because it’s one day, once a year, and-“

“And you haven’t had _relations_ on Yom Kippur before this,” Rey continues her midrashic argument.

Ben searches his memory for a counterexample, but he had very little sex before Rey, and none of it, that he can recall, on Yom Kippur, because he’s usually at his parents’ apartment. 

“So it’s your tradition,” Rey says after he fails to object, in tones of finality. “No relations on Yom Kippur.”

Whining is unattractive in a man of his size, Ben knows. So he does his best to sound reasonable but firm in his counterpoint. He takes her hands in his big, clumsy paws. 

“This is the first time that the two of us have celebrated Yom Kippur together,” he tells her, looking into her eyes. “Maybe our tradition can be…” he trails of suggestively.

Rey sighs, lying back in their bed and beginning to worm her way under the covers. Ben’s hopes that he will see Rey’s tits that night continue to fade. 

“I just don’t want to undermine your family traditions. Since, you know, it’s not like I-“ her voice trails off. 

Rey doesn’t have any family traditions, and the thought makes Ben want to pay assassins to take out every foster parent who did not adopt his beautiful, loving, perfect Rey. Ben wants to hold Rey’s hand as they light a thousand candles together, then feed her cheap gelt until they puke. He’ll fast with her if she wants to—fuck, if she wants family traditions he will fly them to Italy just so they can celebrate a second set of holidays with his Solo cousins. They’ll reel from feast to fast along both the Jewish and Gregorian calendars. 

“No, you’re right,” Ben says, lying down next to her and sweeping a wisp of hair out of her face. “We’ll do it right. You’re home for a whole week. I’ll build you a sukkah and we can do it in there like the ancient Israelites.” 

Rey smiled at him. “Since we live in a fifth-floor walk-up, that will really give the neighbors something to talk about.”

* * *

The Organa-Solo tradition for the morning of Yom Kippur usually involves skipping morning services to laze around in pajamas reading the paper and arguing with each other. But when Ben wakes up to Rey’s pert ass pressed against his habitual morning erection, he can understand why the Jews have scheduled services for nearly the whole 25 hours of Yom Kippur. Thinking about what he can’t have—first and foremost Rey’s warm pussy, which is always his favorite place to be but particularly first thing in the mornings, when her body is soft and relaxed and her eyes are full of sleep and love—puts him right out the proper mood of repentance. Who gives a damn if the other Jews have been hard-hearted or immoral. Ben gets enough flack for his own sins without shouldering collective responsibility for the misdeeds of his entire tribe. But the way he is already minutely rubbing his hips against his girlfriend makes him think that he needs to get himself to shul sooner rather than later. 

His parents can’t be roused, so he walks to his temple hand in hand with Rey. Since she was following Chabad’s instructions to the letter, it was a simple matter of pulling on clothes and stepping out into the bright October sunlight rather than getting showered or making coffee or going through any of the other little rituals of their mornings together.

The parents of his Hebrew school cohort are now retired and regular attendees at services, and he sees Mr. Levy and Mr. and Mrs. Orensteyn greeting them at the door. They nod approvingly at him when he holds the sanctuary door open for Rey.

“Good for you,” Mr. Orensteyn murmurs to him. “Mazel tov.” 

His mind starts to drift as he thinks ahead to where he can bring Rey to show her that she’s part of his family now. Thanksgiving, certainly. He can buy a real menorah instead of using the little cardboard contraption B’nai B’rith hands out on campus. He breaks out of his reverie when he sees Rey mouthing the words as she reads along with her program. Her face is so intent. 

Morning services conclude before noon, and Ben convinces Rey to skip the Yizkor services in favor of napping at home. His stomach is beginning to growl, and sex is slipping down his hierarchy of needs as they walk back to his apartment, but then Rey goes up the stairs in front of him. She reaches the top of the first landing and sees him looking at her thighs under her white cotton sundress. So she flashes him, lifting the back of her skirt to give him a glimpse of tiny pink underwear. Ben growls in the back of his throat and sprints up the stairs towards her. She shrieks in faux fear and runs ahead of him, staying barely ahead of his grasping hands.

After four more flights of stairs, they’re both a little winded from the race, but Rey gets their front door open right before he catches her around the waist, pulling them both down onto the floor in a puddle of sprawling limbs and gasping breaths. 

“You’re in trouble now,” Ben tells her. “That definitely counts as work on Yom Kippur. Forty generations of curses on your house.” He lifts the front of her dress and blows a raspberry into her stomach. She squeaks and giggles. He keeps her pinned to the ground while he makes her writhe with the ticklish scratch of his stubble. 

“You know,” he says conversationally. “I bet Rashi wouldn’t think oral counted as sex. I think I read it in the Babylonian Talmud.” He blows another raspberry slightly below her navel for emphasis. 

Rey’s eyes go a little unfocused as she thinks about it, but she breathlessly gasps that he’s proposing to cheat on the spirit of the law.

Ben snorts. “Just wait ‘til you learn more about us. Cheating based on the letter of the law is an ancient and respected practice. Can I eat you out if I explain how Shabbos goyim work?”

He licked a line south towards the edge of her underwear.

“No, wait Ben! No food on Yom Kippur either! You might…” Rey pauses, suddenly meeting Ben’s very serious expression—he’s never joked about cunnilingus—and then arching her back to dissolve into a fit of giggles. She laughs so hard Ben can see tears leaking from the corners of her eyes from his vantage point on her abdomen. 

Ben laughs with her, and he isn’t certain whether the light-headed feeling he has is from fasting or from the joy of having her back in his arms.

Rey reaches a hand down and smooths the hair from his face. 

“Just like six more hours. Seven if we go to your mother’s break-fast thing first,” she tells him.

“You’re telling me that going balls-deep ten seconds after sundown is mutually exclusive with attending another party at my parents’ house? Oh no, which to choose,” Ben says, leaning into Rey’s caress. 

“Well. Maybe not. There is that coat closet in the entryway,” Rey says. “If you don’t mind me eating heavy hors d’oeuvres at the same time, you can take me as you like.”

They laugh again as they mentally arrange themselves into positions that would allow for both, but Ben feels one of those Yom Kippur realizations sweep over him. Fasting, according to many sociologists, was associated around the world with altered mental states. It divorced people from the physical, brought them closer to the ineffable. 

“We should get married,” Ben says, looking up at Rey. 

She thought he was still joking. “What, is that a loophole? If you get married on Yom Kippur are you allowed to consummate it? You’re not getting out of it that easily- I memorized like three of the Mincha prayers, I’m not missing Avinu Malkeinu…”

“It’s not a loophole. We’d have to wait until tomorrow,” Ben says, taking Rey’s hand in his. 

“Then why-“ Rey asks, blinking more quickly. 

“If I’m going to be written down in the book of life, I want your name written next to mine,” Ben says, going to his knees. “

Her eyes were watery again as she looks up at him. “Leshana tovah tikatev,” she whispered with creditable pronunciation. 

“Yes,” Ben says. “Yes, exactly, exactly.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ben did get laid soon after sundown on Yom Kippur. He had to wait a while longer to get married. Leia invited everyone she knew. Also everyone Rey knew. And everyone Ben knew. Rey’s conversion, even under the gentle guidance of the URJ, took a few more months. And of course, they both insisted on the very fanciest, most ornately drawn ketubah. It is hung next to the front door of their apartment, and has seen many, many things occur from that position of honor. 


	4. a mitzvah

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which Ben is trying to be a good secretary at his temple's board of directors meeting but Rey keeps texting him distracting pictures.

Ben is thirty-five minutes into August’s Temple Beth El board of directors meeting when the first text comes.

It’s from Rey. Ben knows this because she always texts him during temple board meetings, because she knows these meetings are rough on him and that texts from her always cheer him up.

But he doesn’t answer his phone. Because right now, the board is in the middle of a heated dispute over whether the shul can actually afford the building renovations half the congregation feels are urgently necessary and the other half thinks are a waste of money. 

It’s a variation of the same argument they have every month. Because of course it is. Most of their discussions are really just rehashed fights the same people have been having with each other for literally decades. Regardless, Ben is the current board secretary--like his mother had been, for many years before him--and he needs to get the minutes from this meeting down as accurately as possible. 

If he doesn’t, there’ll be a heated dispute during next month’s meeting over who actually said what, to whom, at  _ this _ months’ meeting.

As Ben types away on his laptop ( _ his _ laptop, not the one his mother used to take minutes on; they’d offered it to him when he agreed to take on this position but he couldn’t bring himself to use it) his phone pings again with another text from Rey. And then another, five seconds later. Carolyn, the board’s sitting past president and a close, lifelong personal friend of Ben’s mother, shoots him a pointed glare from across the table. 

Ben silently mouths  _ sorry _ to her and pockets his phone.

“How are we accounting for unplanned renovation expenses on the budget spreadsheet?” Sharon Weiss, a thorn in the side of every Temple Beth El president since time immemorial, is staunchly in the no-renovations camp. In fact, the current rumor is that Sharon is little more than a board plant for the  _ no-renovations _ camp and is sowing the seeds for a board coup at every meeting. But what pisses Ben off the most about Sharon Weiss is she doesn’t trust anyone’s record of these meetings but her own, despite the fact that Ben is a  _ good _ Temple Beth El secretary if he does say so himself. 

“I don’t see the numbers the finance committee is citing in its report anywhere on this page,” Sharon adds, when no one rises to her bait.

Poe Dameron--the head of said finance committee, and a recent convert--is also the temple treasurer. But only until the board can find someone who actually wants the job (or so he’s been insisting ever since he took it on three years ago). At Sharon’s complaint--which, of course, everyone here has already heard many times before--Poe only shakes his head and sighs.

“We’ve been over this, Sharon,” he says, with that shit-eating grin of his that always lets him get away with more than he should.

Poe’s right. They  _ have _ been over this. So many times, in fact, Ben’s pretty sure he won’t need to take much in the way of notes over the next fifteen minutes or so as Sharon and Poe hash this out yet again. The general gist of this entire discussion is almost certainly already in the minutes from May, June,  _ and _ July’s meetings. If Ben’s thirteen-month history of Temple Beth El board meetings with Sharon is any guide, no new ground whatsoever will be covered here tonight on the subject of the finance committee’s fucking spreadsheets.

As they talk, and rehash, and then rehash some more, Ben surreptitiously pulls his phone from his front jeans’ pocket and glances at Rey’s texts. 

And then immediately wishes he hadn’t.

Well.

_ Sort of _ wishes he hadn’t.

Because even though Ben is in the middle of a Temple Beth El board meeting his girlfriend… just sent him pictures. In which she is mostly naked.

In the first one all she’s wearing are those cute little ankle socks she likes to keep on when they have sex in the winter because their apartment gets drafty and her feet always get so cold.

In the second, she’s completely naked again, save for his favorite necktie which she’s tied loosely around her neck. It drapes down her body, between her breasts, and she’s leaning up against the headboard of their bed... and she’s giving him this, this  _ look _ that makes him want to bolt from this meeting right this very second and...

As Ben contemplates the third picture (she’s on her hands and knees in that one, ass to the camera), and then the fourth one (she’s naked and licking a fucking  _ popsicle) _ \--as his dick starts to twitch; and then get harder, and then get harder still, right here in the  _ Padme Amidala Multi-Purpose Room _ where his parents held the fucking oneg after his bris almost thirty years ago--more texts from Rey appear:

**I hope these pictures make the meeting go by a little faster**

**In the meantime I’ll be using my little pink friend to keep me company**

**Love you**

Oh, god.

Her… little pink friend.

Her vibrator, she means.

Ben’s almost positive she means her vibrator.

He has to bite his lip to stifle a groan. Because while Poe would probably understand it if he found out, somehow, that Ben was currently dealing with a hard-on situation during this board meeting because his girlfriend just texted him a bunch of totally unsolicited nudes, he’s willing to bet money that Carolyn and Sharon would  _ not _ .

Ben’s also willing to bet money that he’ll be dead and buried before the sight of Rey’s beautiful, naked body--in any context; in any setting--makes him anything less than ecstatically happy. Hell--he’ll probably be dead and buried before simply being in the vicinity of an _image_ of her beautiful naked body fails to make him hard as a rock in seconds.

The only problem is this is...  _ kind  _ of an inconvenient time and location for him to be looking at these kinds of pictures. He’s not in their bedroom where he can strip off his clothes and fuck Rey’s brains out. Instead, he’s at Temple Beth El, they are now only forty minutes into tonight’s interminable meeting--and from the way Poe’s eyes are starting to lose focus it seems Sharon’s only getting warmed up. 

That second picture of Rey has already permanently seared itself inside Ben’s eyelids. (His necktie. Her  _ tits. _ ) __ But he needs to focus. He is probably going to be here at least another two hours and he  _ needs to focus. _

Because Jesus Christ, these Temple Beth El board meeting minutes won’t write themselves.

He has to write them. After his mother died last spring he promised the board he’d serve a full term as secretary. And that’s exactly what he’s going to do.

Ben coughs into his hand and tries to adjust himself inside his jeans. 

“What do you think, Ben?”

At the sound of his name Ben glances up. Poe is giving him a pointed look. Ben knows that pointed look. It’s the one he and Poe give each other whenever they need backup, or rescuing--or both. Ben has a feeling he and Poe wouldn’t like each other much if they’d met in any other context besides this one. But being the only people under the age of sixty on this board--and the only men on this board--has given them a strange sort of solidarity.

Either way, while Ben doesn’t know  _ exactly _ what Poe is asking him right now (after all, for the past five minutes or so he’d been staring at pictures of his mostly-naked girlfriend and ignoring this meeting altogether) he thinks he can hazard a guess that’s close enough.

“I think we should go ahead with the renovations,” he says. It’s the truth. The building was last updated sometime during Bill Clinton’s second term. And it shows. Everybody knows this. Even the anti-renovation brigade knows this. They only claim to be only against the renovations because they like to be contrary. That’s all they’ve ever been interested in for as long as Ben can remember. “It’s what the congregation wants.”

“Not all of the congregation!” Sharon insists.

Ben’s phone pings again. And again.

He looks down at the screen in spite of himself and--oh, god--now Rey is lying flat on her back in their bed. Her beautiful, long, gorgeous legs are spread so wide he can see…  _ everything _ . Like, literally everything. 

She’s spreading herself open with the fingers of one hand.

And holding her bright pink vibrator in the other.

So he was right about what  _ my little pink friend _ meant.

Goddamnit he’s so fucking hard right now.

The last time he was this hard in this building he was twelve years old and hiding in the men’s room during Bazine Natal’s Bat Mitzvah. He never thought he’d live to see the day when his dick would hurt  _ this much _ in this building ever again.

“The Organa-Solo family has donated too much money to the shul over the years for their opinions on the renovations to be ignored!” someone--Carolyn, probably; it’s usually Carolyn--shouts. But Ben barely hears her, barely even registers that Carolyn is using his family’s heavy involvement in the synagogue over the years as a pawn in this fight over the fucking renovations, because  _ fuck, _ Rey is so hot, he’s the luckiest man in the entire world, and all he wants to do right now is get home to her, pry her hands off of her body, throw that vibrator in the trash, and fuck her to within an inch of her life.

“Ben?”

But Ben isn’t listening to this stupid discussion anymore.

He’s imagining being balls-deep inside the love of his life.

“ _ Ben.” _

“Hm?”

“Ben Solo.  _ Put your phone away right now.” _

In the end, it’s only Carolyn’s sharp admonishment that snaps him out of his reverie and brings him back to the present: to the room in the temple that was named after his grandmother, where ten elderly women and Poe Dameron are waiting for him to answer whatever question someone just asked him.

“I… uh. I agree with Poe,” Ben mutters. Which, statistically speaking, is probably the truth.

But that comment only leads to another argument, which Ben subsequently tunes out as well.

* * *

It’s almost midnight by the time Ben makes it back to their apartment. 

Rey is sitting on their living room sofa, half-watching “Queer Eye” and half dozing. The way he usually finds her when he’s late getting home from work and she doesn’t want to go to bed without him.

When Ben closes the front door behind him she startles, then succumbs to a powerful full-body yawn.

“Your meeting ran late,” she notes. Yawns again. Blinks sleepily at him.

Ben scrubs a hand over his face and drops his briefcase into the chair by the door.

“No thanks to you,” he says. He tries to sound irritated with her, but he  _ isn’t _ irritated with her. Farthest thing from it, in fact. 

No matter what he does he can’t seem to hide his grin.

“Oh? What did I do to make the meeting run long?” She’s all mock innocence now, down to the careful little smile on her face and her batting eyelashes.

Ben plays along, sitting beside her on the couch. She scoots over until her back rests up against the armrest. He pulls her legs onto his lap.

He leans over her until his lips find her forehead. He presses a gentle, lingering kiss there, smiling against her skin. 

“Well. You kept distracting the board secretary.” His lips trail lower, down her neck, until they reach that sweet spot where her collarbone meets her shoulder. He gives it a playful nibble, reveling in how deliciously the press of his lips there makes her shiver. 

This woman will be the death of him. 

“Oh?” she asks. More mock innocence. “How so?”

“You kept sending”--kiss-- “incredibly indecent”--another kiss-- “ _ pictures _ to him. While he was trying hard to pay attention to the  _ very _ important meeting. He had so much trouble with it everyone kept having to repeat themselves.”

At that Rey drops the innocent act and laughs. “Sharon must have loved the opportunity to keep talking.”

“Oh, she did. Believe me.”

They sit together in comfortable silence for a long moment after that, the only sound in the room coming from the television where the Queer Eye guys are going on about this week’s latest fashion disaster.

And then Rey says, very quietly:

“You’re a good person for doing this.”

Ben looks at her. “For watching bad tv with you?”

She slugs his arm playfully. “For being on the temple board.”

“Why does subjecting myself to three hours of pointless torture every month--with Sharon Weiss, no less--make me a good person?”

Because it doesn’t make him a good person. Not really. He’s doing it out of a sense of strong, immutable obligation. Out of a feeling that somehow, if he manages to give back to this community enough, he’ll be able to forgive it for everything it’s taken from him over the years.

“It does though,” Rey insists. She kisses his cheek. “It’s a mitzvah. Isn’t it?”

Ben sighs. He knows Rey is trying to be supportive. Trying to understand. So even though he doesn’t think what he’s doing  _ is _ a mitzvah, he ponders the question for a long moment before answering. “My mom would have thought so.” A pause. “She definitely would have thought so.”

“So I’m right then.”

“Just because my mom thought something was true doesn’t mean it is  _ actually _ true.”

She pulls back a little and looks him in the eye.

“Are you sure about that?” She quirks an eyebrow at him. “Everything you’ve told me about her makes her seem like she was quite the lady.”

Ben nods, refusing to acknowledge the lump forming in his throat at the thought of his mother. “She was. But…” He trails off. Wipes a little at his eyes. “But she didn’t know  _ everything _ .” 

Even though during most of his childhood it sure felt like he did.

Rey must see the look on his face because she drops it after that.

“Did you like the pictures I sent you?” She crawls onto his lap, and rests her forehead against his in that sweet way of hers that always lets him know that she’s here for him. Always here.

He chuckles against her lips.

“You know I did.”

“Was sending them to you a mitzvah?”

“I had a boner that lasted for, like--two hours.”

“Answer my question Ben.”

He does, eventually. 

But not with words.


End file.
